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The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday.
"We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States.
The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper.
"With what we found, practically anyone in the country — from a teenager on up — could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like," Mr. Stubblefield said.
And guess who's responsible for anyone having noticed any of this?
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The software was initially obtained by critics of electronic voting, who discovered it on a Diebold Internet site in January. This is the first review of the software by recognized computer security experts.
Not to worry says Diebold; every day in every way we're getting better and better. There's good information about just who Diebold is and what it has acquired of late.
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As an industry leader, Diebold has been the focus of much of the controversy over high-tech voting. Some people, in comments widely circulated on the Internet, contend that the company's software has been designed to allow voter fraud. Mr. Rubin called such assertions "ludicrous" and said the software's flaws showed the hallmarks of poor design, not subterfuge.
The list of flaws in the Diebold software is long, according to the paper, which is online at avirubin .com/vote.pdf. Among other things, the researchers said, ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so that a voter might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while the vote is recorded for an opponent.
The kind of scrutiny that the researchers applied to the Diebold software would turn up flaws in all but the most rigorously produced software, Mr. Stubblefield said. But the standards must be as high as the stakes, he said.
"This isn't the code for a vending machine," he said. "This is the code that protects our democracy."
No mention of a paper trail for purposes of recounts, but at least the issue made it into the paper of record.